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Some Awesome Google Tag Manager Resources

When push comes to shove, I’m a pretty lazy guy. I enjoy nothing more than just to stretch my legs on a couch, pick up my iPad, and read what’s going on in the world. I skip the news, since they’re just full of depressing stories. Instead, I head over to my favorite Google+ communities to see what’s new in the blogosphere.

This approach has led me to some pretty amazing individuals, whom I follow like a suckerfish. These people have written a bunch of great articles, which have helped countless people with their Google Tag Manager installations. Or they might be really active in the online communities which people turn to for advice.

As you might have noticed, Google’s own documentation is often pretty scarce. That’s why so many amazing people do such an incredible job in making the often complicated details behind tag management a bit easier to comprehend.

Without too much further ado, I think the time is ripe to reveal my favorite Google Tag Manager resources, so that you can get on your way to becoming a Grand Tag Master.

I’ve added a short description under each link, along with a difficulty level (my own subjective analysis). The difficulty level has nothing to do with the quality of writing. Rather, I use it to denote how difficult it is to understand the concept the article focuses on.

If you feel like an essential article or individual is missing from these lists, drop me a line with a link and description, and I’ll see if they belong here!

Follow These People

First and foremost, here’s my Follow These People list. I consider these people to be top contributors in Google Tag Manager related posts. I’ve chosen them partly because I really think that they write a lot of great stuff either in the forums or on their blogs, and partly because they exhibit a quality I enjoy most about a good writer: they don’t brag about themselves or their companies, nor do they exhibit (too much) self-promotion.

Seriously, we’re all taking part in a huge knowledge transfer experiment here. Leave your ego at the door.

And yes, I’m aware that I’ve added myself to the picture of my favorite GTM superstars, and also that I’ve linked to a number of my own posts in the latter sections. I claim the right to do so under editorial privileges :)

General GTM Guides

These guides should help you with deploying GTM. There’s a lot of things to keep in mind when adopting a tag management system. You’d best start with Julien Coquet’s excellent slide show on what tag management is, and, more importantly, what it isn’t.

Tracking Guides

Tracking is why people install Google Tag Manager. There are so many different ways to track efficiently (and inefficiently) with GTM, and these guides will get you on your way to making sure you collect all the relevant data from your visitors.

GTM Extensions

This is where the real meat of GTM is. Since it’s basically run-of-the-mill client-side scripting, you can do some crazy JavaScript magic to collect data in ways you wouldn’t have thought possible. Of course, best practices must be observed, which is why you shouldn’t try your hand at these before understanding the basics of client-side programming and markup languages.